What the hell were you thinking?

The freckled teenager looks directly across the room at the panelists reviewing the Northern Gateway pipeline. "Some day when I have kids and they look me in the eyes and ask, 'What the hell were you thinking? Why didn't you do anything about this?' I know I'll be able to look them back in the eyes with absolute confidence and say, 'I'm sorry. I tried my very hardest.'"

He pauses. "Will you?"

The surreptitiously recorded video of Sam Harrison's oral statement to the Joint Review Panel has been zipping around on social media for the past week, propelled by the likes of Naomi Klein, the David Suzuki Foundation and VSB Chair Patti Bacchus.